Practicing Pronunciation

Hello English Learners!

I want to write a short post on how to practice pronunciation.

Learning pronunciation is not like learning grammar. It is also not like learning vocabulary.

Rather, learning pronunciation is like learning to dance. Or learning martial arts. It requires exercise, and practice. It requires teaching your body (mostly your mouth and tongue) to move in the right way, and at the right speed. Even if you understand what you need to so, in your mind, that does not mean you will be able to do it.

Think about riding a bicycle. If I showed you a video on how to ride a bike, or you read a book on how to ride a bike, you still couldn't ride a bike. The book and video might help, but you need something more. You need practice, and experience.

This is just like learning correct pronunciation. Video's and books will help you, but without practice and experience, you will never fix your pronunciation.

However, there are some tips that can help you practice better.

1. Learn to understand how your mouth makes sound. When you speak your native language, where does the sound come from? How do you speak? Learning how the glottis and the vocal cords work together with the mouth, the lips, and the tongue will help you practice better. I will discuss all of this in a future post.

2. Record yourself speaking, and listen to yourself. It is important to hear your own voice, and become familiar with your own accent. It is very common to think that you don't have an accent. When you speak English, you sounds just like your teacher, right? Well, thats actually not true. If you are a English student, I can guarantee you have an accent. You need to learn what you really sound like. The best way is to use a cellphone, or a voice recorder, to record your voice, and then play it back to hear what you sound like. I will discuss this more in a future post.

3. Practice everyday. Just like you practice your vocabulary everyday, and work on your grammar everyday, you should practice your pronunciation everyday. Make it a habit to work on speaking English a half hour everyday, or, if time permits, an hour everyday. Be patient and persistent, and it will pay off!

4. Realize you are on a long journey. Learning correct pronunciation is a journey that lasts many years. However, what is nice is that your pronunciation does not have to be perfect to be a fluent speaker of English! Many important scientists, business leaders, or celebrities have very strong accents, and are still very successful. Correcting your pronunciation can be important, but what is also important is to not let your accent ever make you nervous to speak English. Most people think that accents sounds very nice, and very cool. So be proud of your accent!

Up next will be a post about the lesson schedule for the next few episodes!

Cheers!